The Shadow of a Crime eBook

“The man is mad and murderous!” cried
the affrighted chaplain. “Take him away.”

Not waiting for his order to be executed, the spick-and-span
wearer of the unsoiled surplice disappeared into one
of the side rooms of the court.

This extraordinary scene might have resulted in a
yet more rigorous treatment of the prisoners, but
it produced the opposite effect. Within the same
hour Ralph and Sim were removed from Doomsdale and
imprisoned in a room high up in the Donjon tower.

Their new abode was in every way more tolerable than
the old one. It had no fire, and it enjoyed the
questionable benefit of being constantly filled with
nearly all the smoke of every fire beneath it.
The dense clouds escaped in part through a hole in
the wall where a stone had been disturbed. This
aperture also served the less desirable purpose of
admitting the rain and the wind.

Here the days were passed. They were few and
short. Doomsdale itself could not have made them
long.

With his long streaky hair hanging wild about his
temples, Sim sat hour after hour on a low bench beneath
the window, crying at intervals that God would not
let them die.

CHAPTER XLVI.

THE SKEIN UNRAVELLED.

It was Thursday when they were condemned, and the
sentence was to be carried into effect on the Thursday
following. Saturday, Sunday, and Monday passed
by without any event of consequence. On Tuesday
the under gaoler opened the door of their prison,
and the sheriff entered. Ralph stepped out face
to face with him. Sim crept closer into the shadow.

“The King’s warrant has arrived,”
he said abruptly.

“And is this all you come to tell us?”
said Ralph, no less curtly.

“Ray, there is no love between you and me, and
we need dissemble none.”

“And no hate—­at least on my part,”
Ralph added.

“I had good earnest of your affections,”
answered the sheriff with a sneer; “five years’
imprisonment.” Then waving his hand with
a gesture indicative of impatience, he continued,
“Let that be as it may. I come to talk
of other matters.”

Resting on a bench, he added,—­

“When the trial closed on Thursday, Justice
Hide, who showed you more favor than seemed to some
persons of credit to be meet and seemly, beckoned
me to the antechamber. There he explained that
the evidence against you being mainly circumstantial,
the sentence might perchance, by the leniency of the
King, be commuted to one of imprisonment for life.”

A cold smile passed over Ralph’s face.

“But this great mercy—­whereof I would
counsel you to cherish no certain hope—­would
depend upon your being able and willing to render
an account of how you came by the document—­the
warrant for your own arrest—­which was found
upon your person. Furnish a credible story of
how you came to be possessed, of that instrument, and
it may occur—­I say it may occur—­that
by our Sovereign’s grace and favor this sentence
of death can yet be put aside.”